You've made excellent progress in a short time, particularly your contact point and your finish. But, your set up and takeback are still suffering from old habits. I've said all this several times before, but, I also understand that acceptance preceeds change.

You need to first accept the premise that your swing is generated by two techniques: (1) upper body rotation, and (2) arm supination and pronation. Ideally there should be virtually no independent swinging of the arm from the shoulder or the elbow. With your arm and racquet set, and your left hand on the throat of the racquet and the racquet head right in front of your face, you pivot until your chest and racquet face are facing 4 O'Clock. That is your takeback in its totality! Your arm and racquet have not moved. They can't because your left hand is still on the throat of the racquet. The racquet is pointing straight up and the face at 4 O'Clock (not pointing back at the back fence, and not with an open racquet face pointing to the roof). From there, you initiate your unit turn forward with your right hip and that movement causes the racquet head to drop back.

But, you are still taking a high looping takeback with your arm (elbow and shoulder joints) independent of your "unit turn," and your unit turn is totally insufficient. AND, IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE AN ADEQUATE UNIT TURN YOU NEED A LOWER, WIDER STANCE. Further, you are leading your backswing with the racquet head, squandering the racquet acceleration of waiting for your forward turn to supinate and then pronate before contact, and the racquet face is open to the roof. Those three habits: (1) upright narrow stance, (2) takeback with the arm, and (3) leading the takeback with an open racquet face, are a ceiling on further improvement.

IMO, if you employ a measure of discipline by keeping your left hand on the throat of the racquet until you are ready to initiate your unit turn forward, it will go a long way, if not all the way, in curing your remaining bad habits.

PS: What chico says about turning your thumb downward, I interpret and pointing your racquet face back toward the back fence. I agree with that, but, don't overdo it. If you can get it to 4 O'Clock, that is sufficient, IMO. I reject the notion of purposely raising your elbow in the backswing, even a small amount. That is a slippery slope that may lead to a flying elbow which will only complicate the swing and add an unecessary variable that will impair consistent clean ball striking, and serves no useful purpose. At the completion of your unit turn, YOUR HAND should be hitting the wall behind you, not your elbow, AND NOT YOUR RACQUET HEAD. To be clear, if, at the completion of your tackback, your elbow is IN and FORWARD (where it must be at the beginning of your unit turn forward anyway), and your racquet head is STRAIGHT UP, and your arm and grip are loose and relaxed, inertia will cause the arm to supinate and the racquet head to drop down below the hand when you initiate your unit turn forward with the kinetic chain beginning with your hip rotation ala The L&R Guy.

But, the success of all of that is dependent on a proper takeback and being in the correct set up position (stance, unit turn and racquet position), as I describe above, before you initiate the kinetic chain.

Thanks Limpinhitter! I do accept the principles of it, in my mind at least. Translating it into actual practice is proving to be a real bear. In front of the mirror I can shadow it perfectly. On a court, it's an effort to not slide back into old muscle memory. I will keep pluggin away at it, till it does become the new muscle memory.

I did go back to the L&R video, and am re-reading this entire thread. I am most likely over thinking on the court. Played doubles today, and I noted how unconscious I was hitting my backhand, in stark contrast to all the thoughts going on when hitting a forehand. I suppose sheer repetition will sort that out- but I have to make sure the form is correct, or else it'll just compound the situation.

Playing around with string setup probably wasn't the best idea too, while working on this.

Looking very decent. Just remember to drag the racket head across the strike zone, don't muscle it. And you don't have to step into every shot either. Sit and lift. Use knees. This will give you some great rotational energy when you push off the ground, and give you better timing as you have longer to prepare and don't have to time that forward step

Thanks Limpinhitter! I do accept the principles of it, in my mind at least. Translating it into actual practice is proving to be a real bear. In front of the mirror I can shadow it perfectly. On a court, it's an effort to not slide back into old muscle memory. I will keep pluggin away at it, till it does become the new muscle memory.

I did go back to the L&R video, and am re-reading this entire thread. I am most likely over thinking on the court. Played doubles today, and I noted how unconscious I was hitting my backhand, in stark contrast to all the thoughts going on when hitting a forehand. I suppose sheer repetition will sort that out- but I have to make sure the form is correct, or else it'll just compound the situation.

Playing around with string setup probably wasn't the best idea too, while working on this.

Click to expand...

Cross court drills with a partner or machine. Keep your left hand on the throat of the racquet until you are ready to turn forward.

Cross court drills with a partner or machine. Keep your left hand on the throat of the racquet until you are ready to turn forward.

Click to expand...

I like to do a partner drill like this where one is working on the attack I/O and the
other partner is working on defending with a more defensive shot that sets up another
I/O for you. Sometimes you can repeat this quite a few with the same ball.
After a few switch roles.

Probably a good idea. As aimr75 says, it takes 5,000 repititions to learn a new stroke. As Ash Smith says, they have to be correct repititions. IMO, you're better off starting with hand fed or machine fed balls so that you don't have to focus as much on your footwork and movement and can just focus on technique. I also like shaddow swinging. But, I caution against shaddow swinging in front of a mirror which distracts your attention from what you are "feeling" which is all you have on the court.

Video from today's hit. Was away for a week, so I really didn't feel like doing the hand fed balls today. Spent most of the practice time on the ad side. Mostly inside out FH, I hope there is some improvement. The thumb down suggestion really helped the takeback (at least that's the feeling I got).

Played 2 sets afterwards, and the forehand was just gone. One of those days. On the bright side, I found my slice serve! I (re)discovered that the body weight direction has a lot to do with the direction of the serve! Still, the groundies were really bad, and I ended up chipping and charging in the second set. Lost 6-1, 6-4.

On a side note: Am really trying to give the Lux Alu Power 16L a chance, but the dead Tour Bite 17 felt better than this. There's a lot less pop- and bite. Maybe it's really not for me... excuses, excuses eh?

Alu power seems best when you hit hard without too much topspin. No feel on every other shot.
You hit really well when you can get to the ball. Not a fan of lifting your left foot on almost every forehand, or the strange slice backhand, old school topspin backhand.....
Seems you lose balance when forced to move quickly or 3 steps, and form falls apart.

Thanks Leed! Apologies for the slice, I was just chopping it back, my thoughts were on the forehand. But yes thanks for pointing that out before it becomes a bad habit. Topspin backhand is kind of old school I suppose. But what is new school anyway? I can hit it with heavier top.

Working on mobility- frustrating because that was my strong point back in the day. Still, I do need to be more explosive on the first step.

Re alu power- I think that's a good description..I have no feel for the ball when I hit it. Very strange. Gotta get some Tour Bite back in to reset my mind.

New school backhand is longer followthru, turning the racket over, and ending up on your right hand side of your body, facing the right sideline, not facing the target like yours.
Every guy I know who is 6'1" and 220 lbs. who hit snot out of the ball love AluPower even after a month. I like it for 3 groundies, then just blah.....

Ok, so what we're looking for here (at least what i think you are looking for) is a backswing absent external rotation of the arm. (this should occur at the beginning of the forward swing) That would mean, that the wrist is neutral, the forearm is on the "pronated side" (not supinated).

One way to correct this, is to "hide" the butt cap until you pull the racquet forward. Can you see how in your photo sequence, as soon as the hands separate you start to rotate the entire arm externally, wrist extended, arm supinated and BUTTCAP TO BALL alignment? Contrast this with the Fed pictures and notice how the butt cap is angled back and away from the ball throughout the backswing...thus saving the flip and alignment for the forward swing....Anyway, another way to look/correct this...good luck. It's probably worth the effort, as it will lead to a shorter, more direct line to the ball.

That backhand groundie is much closer. Most guys would use a longer backswing that starts higher, not a straight takeback that needs to be lifted upwards in a separate motion.
Finish is much better. Don't copy Vilas, instead copy Fed.

I think doing the progressions has helped. The arc of the ball is much better- I do think when I moved back to the baseline, I look a bit stiffer/less loose. I do feel the SSC a bit more, so I suppose that's good. Will probably spend some more time doing these progressions.

But... that's not it. I know what you're going through. Been there myself. But just take my word for it... you don't have the 'feeling' of that move yet. It takes awhile.

The first problem is your right leg. You have this habit, which I mentioned before , that your last step is your left leg. You always plant and load with your right but then you step out with your left leg. That messes everything up and causes you to arm the ball and pull off to the left side like you did in your dancing days. you need to move to the ball and the LAST STEP is the loading of the right leg. then push off the right. what you are doing now is load on right, step on left leg (which unloads everything :??? then you are standing up on your right.

To get the 'millenium fh' down and the ssc you need to push off the right. You can't start the move just with the arm like you are doing. The tutorial on VTA is spot on. He emphasizes this point too several times and he is correct. You need to do that set position and then push off with your right leg. He shadows that part over and over in the vid. Trust me, I know how to do this and I'm guaranteeing with 100% confidence that you cannot do that move without the loose arm and leg push. The leg push doesn't have to be huge. Any push will do. If you push off with the right leg and the racquet is in the position he describes (which yours isn't btw) and your arm is loose then you are going to be able to do it.

You need to fix your racquet set up before the move. You have it a little flat. Watch the VTA vid again and get your setup to look like that. The racquet has to be in the exact position or extremely close to it for this move to work.

It's not easy to get the feel. I've been there. You gotta shadow swing the crap out of it till somehow u do it right once and the lightbulb will go off in your head and you'll go 'ohhhh!!! that's it!!!!!'.

Here's some advice.. if the move doesn't feel 100% natural and 100% very easy to do then you are doing it wrong and you need to change something. If you do it right it's very easy and feels good and you will know you are doing it right.

If you do it right the racquet moves like that on it's own. You don't have to manipulate it. It just goes by itself and it will look like all the pros.

Look at Li Na. If she can do it so can you. Does your racquet path like like this? The answer is no.
If you do it right it will look like this. You don't have to be a mega athlete or super flexible. This is just the way the racquet moves if you follow every single step with all the reference points and angles that vta describes.

Don't flick your arm. Don't flick your wrist etc like u are doing in those shadow swings. The racquet will move by itself if done correctly. And contact is made when your wrist returns to neutral like Li Na's. And note how Li Na is going into the ball (her energy from the swing is going into contact). Unlike you, because of that left leg, you always seem to go to the left.

Will do. Those were the drills in the "SSC 2009" vid. Will re watch for the leg action, but Heath did say to do that with the wrist to get the feeling of ulnar deviation/ radial deviation as opposed to pronation/supination. Will do the drills from the "Millenium Forehand" vid as well. All my thoughts today were on the forearm position.

No worries, I still feel today was a step in the right direction.

On a side note, Dunlop Black Widow 17 has rescued me from the hell of Alu Power 16L. I can feel the ball again

not quite. he didn't say 'do that with the wrist'. he mentions the leg push / hip turn and then shadows it and says 'get this feeling here in the wrist' 'this is the feeling you want to get'. you want to feel your wrist / racquet move like this' etc. he doesn't say "do" this with the wrist.

and he says 'feel the suppination' and i think the only thing he said you might want to 'do' is near contact where he said you 'can'
radial deviate your wrist.

Wow, sequencial photography is great for analysis.
Bottom line, your contact point is too far to the side, not enough forward, so you take your forehand's late late late. Get your rackethand forward at contact.
That's a wierd hybrid almost conti looking contact point with a semi modern grip.

You get no body weight behind your shots (forehand) because it's taken out to your side....like old school conti forehands.
Look at the gir's skirts, legs section. See how far forwards they all take their forehands, and look at the position of their arms and hand at contact.

You are swinging linearly. If you want a linear type swing that's fine. But you are going for the modern, angular, millenium, ssc, biting topspin swing right? Ok then...

Look at image #4. The butt is not pointing at the ball. In fact your butt never points at the ball throughout the swing. This is a clear indication the swing is wrong. If you do this right the butt will point at the ball for a long time. So... how do we do that? ...

1) Look at image #3. The racquet is not aligned properly for angular rotation. In this frame the throat of the racquet is lined up w/ the ball. Not good. The head of your racquet should be lined up with the ball at least, or even optimally imo more inside the ball. Meaning the ball should be a little farther out to the right than the head of the racquet. A little outside is better because this forces you to go out there to the right and get the ball and attack it and not scamper away timidly to the left to meet your imaginary dance partner you're so fond of.

2) During the backswing when you lower your hand it has to come closer to your body. Look at your hand in images 1 - 4. Your hand stays the same length away from your body the whole time. This is part of the problem. You need to lower your arm/hand and bring it closer to your body before the forward swing. Look at any pro who uses this method. They all do this.
Look at the above safin vid again to see him doing it. Or any fed, rafa, kohlscreiber or whoever vid.

Lowering the hand and letting it fall closer to the body does 2 things:
a. it lets your arm stay loose (as opposed to fighting your body and gravity by keeping it the same distance away from your body like in your images. Also I'd say to keep the head of your racquet a few more degrees higher than your hand. It looks like you are purposely trying to make it flat and get it into a PTD. Keep it up a little more like in the dozens of images i've posted.

b. Lowering the hand and letting it fall closer to you also allows you to accomplish the most important part you are missing which is...

3) Swing inside out. This type of fh is an inside out type of swing. The hand is closer to the body and then swings OUT to the right to meet the ball. In other words the hand gets increasing farther away from the body while pulling the butt towards the ball. Not straight at the ball like you are doing. Don't listen to other posters here who like to argue 'angular momentum can be expressed by linear components etc etc blah blah blah'. They don't know what they are talking about.

This swing is angular or more accurately uses angular momentum. The hand is close to body (or closer), you push up/off with the leg and rotate the core, the racquet tilts back ON IT'S OWN, the arm swings OUT TO THE RIGHT (as in towards the right net post or towards the side fence), not straight to the ball. just like the lock and roll guy demonstrates with his little drum. As he turns the drum the strings FLY OUT AWAY from the drum. As you can see described in the beginning of this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wwg9DB8S8a8

When you do this the racquet head will go behind your body like heath says on VTA (also not present in your images), like u can see in the Li Na pics above or as you can see w/ any pro. The racquet head will go behind the body but the hand is still in front of the body. This is because the path the racquet will take is INSIDE OUT, then it makes contact and continues around. If you have an inside out racquet path you will have that smooth looking swing (like the strings swinging around the drum, or fed, rafa or any pro for that matter) and your rhs will be much faster and this will happen with almost no arm muscling.

If you do the above steps the butt of the racquet will point to the ball like in Li Na image #2. Then you rotate, the arm flies out toward the right while moving forward and up and contact is made with a neutral wrist.

You should feel like you are dragging/pulling the butt towards the ball from under it. This is why u see a lot of pro making contact with the head a little under the hand. Because they were pulling the butt towards the ball from below. when the butt gets as far as your hiting structure allows it will start to move to the left across your body. Then the head catches up to the ball and is contacting the ball on an 'up and across' type of action. You'll get massive topspin and sidespin with this and the contact feels very solid almost like a well struct flat drive feeling.

You need to:
1) line the head up with the ball in prep. (ball should be more to the right then in your pics.
2) let the hand drop closer to the body and STAY LOOSE
3) push off/up with leg which will cause the racquet to flip back and down and give you the butt point
4) rotate core and LET the arm swing OUT TO THE RIGHT while pulling the butt towards the ball.

And no you don't need a straight arm for this. A bent arm fh still has an inside out motion. The arm goes from in to out. not a straight linear path.

leg push looks good there.
yea you pointed for a micro-second there. inside out will make it better.

also you need to change the contact angle. the inside out might help with that too i think. currently you make contact on the outside of the ball like your hooking it and you sort of graze over the outside of the ball and the racquet face is tilted and angled. you should be making solid flat or pretty close to flat looking contact with the racquet.
as in Li Na pic #4.
This is the neutral wrist contact after the butt pull. this is why it feels really solid even though you get a lot of spin. contact is made squarely and you get the nice pop sound.

Look how squarely Fed makes contact here but still getting lots of spin and a nice pop. even when he cranks up the topspin near the middle of the vid contact is still square.

In the end, what matters is how your forehand is performing for you. Are you confident it can hit a forcing shot whenever you see one? Are you consistent AND powerful with that forehand?
Can the pace and spin, consistency and accuracy take you to the next level?
Great technique certainly helps, but having the ball go where and when you want it to, with the pace and spin you need, is the bottom line.

In the end, what matters is how your forehand is performing for you. Are you confident it can hit a forcing shot whenever you see one? Are you consistent AND powerful with that forehand?
Can the pace and spin, consistency and accuracy take you to the next level?
Great technique certainly helps, but having the ball go where and when you want it to, with the pace and spin you need, is the bottom line.

Click to expand...

Hi Leed, yeah a good point you make. And the thought has crossed my mind of when enough is enough. But the answer is definitely no. And it is in stark contrast to the backhand, which I hit without thinking. The whole reason I decided to retool is because the old forehand just wasn't a weapon. Not something I would run around my backhand for, and sometimes I would choose the backhand on center hit shots. This retooled forehand sometimes shows me that it can become a weapon- much more options than the old linear one, and I can actually hit winners off it. But it's a bit streaky right now, which is why I'm focusing on technique. It's still a ways to go, but I do see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Plus, I'm the OC kind of guy who enjoys this kind of tinkering. Even in my junior days, I'd just take a basket out and work for hours. While I'd love to do that now, I have just a a couple hours a week to play- video analysis helps maximize the productivity of these sessions. And of course all your input is invaluable.

I don't think you should torture yourself about your footwork compared to a 7.0 counterpuncher who uses his legs as much as his arms to win matches.
If he had your time for tennis, he'd likely have some poor footwork too.
You can STRIVE for perfection, but know none of us will ever attain it.

and then once you get today's lesson and technique down you'll finally b able to hit a real inside out fh. just hit later and inside of ball instead of how you do it now which is turn your whole body around and hit it cc to the right side haha

LOL. I can only wish. I do play on the ad side, backhand return is excellent from there. Forehand-- not so much yet.

Since LeeD brought it up, here's some video from today's point play. If I can get the forehand to the level of my backhand, I'd be over the moon. Perhaps footwork also comes from confidence in the shot? I seem to move to the left better than the right.

and then once you get today's lesson and technique down you'll finally b able to hit a real inside out fh. just hit later and inside of ball instead of how you do it now which is turn your whole body around and hit it cc to the right side haha

Click to expand...

The wrist is not always neutral, (Heath has this wrong IMO), and in fact, what you are describing (turn your whole body and hit it cc) is a result of the wrist being too neutral. The angle of the wrist (how much "wrist layback") is the principal dictator of the shot line, so the wrist would tend to be MORE laid back on an inside out forehand.

The wrist is not always neutral, (Heath has this wrong IMO), and in fact, what you are describing (turn your whole body and hit it cc) is a result of the wrist being too neutral. The angle of the wrist (how much "wrist layback") is the principal dictator of the shot line, so the wrist would tend to be MORE laid back on an inside out forehand.

Click to expand...

I disagree.

Heath has it right imo.
Show me one video of a male pro that is not hitting down the line or inside out, is using ssc, is not using excessive ISR for topspin (ie david ferrer) and does not have a neutral wrist on contact.
I say you can't.

The 'wrist layback' determining shot line is for a different type of fh. (unless you're going dtl or inside out, where the wrist will be laid back a little on i/o and occasionally on dtl but not always, which i've mentioned several times in this thread and is also mentioned by Heath)

The 'turn the whole body and hit it cc' comment was me describing what the OP currently does when he hits i/o. He doesn't know how to hit an i/o fh yet and when he does go i/o that's what he does. I wasn't describing what he 'should' do.